Post navigation

Destructive Morons

Nipping down the post office yesterday with Mini Minx in the buggy, I spotted an old man trying to do himself an injury with a massive big tub. You know the 4ft diameter, huge flower tubs you get lining the side of the road in flowery villages? It was on its side and he was cursing at not being able to right it.

Being a bit of a strong woman (under this flab are muscles of solid steel. Honest), I shouted over to see if he needed help. He was fooled by my ‘mere mortal’ disguise, too, and replied, “Naw, you’re all right, I can’t even shift it”.

“No really, you’ll hurt yourself; let me help”, I insisted. On went the buggy brake (and triple checked – I nearly lost baby Mini in front of a car when she was 4 days old thanks to a dodgy buggy brake. Despite a 4 day old caesarean, I leaped on the road and yanked the buggy and the baby clear off the ground and to safety. It smarted somewhat, for a few days. Moral: always triple-check your brakes).

Sorry, I digress. So, I stood on the other side of the tub, did a count of 3, and sure enough, between us both, we righted it. There was another upside down and we got that one turned over too, but unfortunately lost the contents down the steep hill to the playing field. The man cursed the ‘kids’ who’d done it. Yep, probably took a whole gang of them to do it, but one old man and one fat middle-aged mum to sort it out. Another old man whose garden I complimented on the walk back up the hill pointed out more damage done by said ‘kids’: 3 huge beds of roadside daffodils completely trashed.

I wonder if they were local kids, or ones from the caravan site here on holiday? Or ones from the other caravan site here on stop-over in their travelling lives? It’s easy to blame ‘outsiders’, but I’ve only lived here 2 years and I’ve noticed that the phone box is only ever smashed up in the summer; the greasy, hooded, over-grown teenagers (ie in their 30s but trying to look cool) muttering furtively into their mobiles while they loiter at street corners only appear in the summer. Graffiti only appears around now and ceases when the holiday trade stops.

Now, I used to just ignore mindless thuggery. But the older I get, the less I even try to empathise with destructive morons who wreck flowers and things put in place to make a dreary old place look a bit nicer. I can’t understand that mindset at all. And believe me, I’ve tried! My conclusion is that people who destroy pretty things for the hell of it are anti-social scum. There is something pretty fundamental missing from their (tiny) brains. Therefore they’ll never change or see why what they do is so wrong. It makes me angry almost beyond words, angrier than I get with the lazy dog-walkers who bag up their dog poo then leave it in the middle of the path, for the Magic Dog Poo Fairy to come and collect and spirit away (Nnnngggggah! I swear if I actually catch someone doing that, I’ll bloody rub their noses in it! Literally. I found a couple of abandoned poo-filled bags in a short walk along the coast today alone)

So, what to do with really horrible, aberrant humans like that? Rather than get all Daily Fail and militant and ‘lock them up!’, I think they should be encouraged to stay at home with their Nintendos and Playstations, munching on pizza, drinking White Lightning and smoking their fags. Get obese and ill and stay indoors for the rest of their hateful lives, away from normal people. And preferrably don’t pass on their hateful genes.